Bad Hugh

"That's he," the keeper whispered to Alice, who had fallen behind Hugh

and his mother. "That's he, just turning this way--the one to the

right."

Alice nodded in token that she understood, and then stood watching while

he came up. Mrs. Worthington and Hugh were watching too, not him

particularly, for they did not even know which was Sullivan, but stood

waiting for the whole long line advancing slowly toward them, their eyes

cast down with conscious shame, as if they shrank from being seen. One

of them, however, was wholly unabashed. He thought it probable the

keeper would point him out; he knew they used to do so when he first

came there, but he did not care; he rather liked the notoriety, and when

he saw that Alice seemed waiting for him, he fixed his keen eyes on her,

starting at the sight of so much beauty, end never even glancing at the

other visitors, at Mrs. Worthington and Hugh, who, a little apart from

each other, saw him at the same moment, both turning cold and faint, the

one with surprise, and the other with a horrid, terrible fear.

It needed but a glance to assure Hugh that he stood in the presence of

the man who with strangely winning powers had tempted him to sin--the

villain who had planned poor Adah's marriage--Monroe, her guardian,

whose sudden disappearance had been so mysterious. Hugh never knew how

he controlled himself from leaping into that walk and compelling the

bold wretch to tell if he knew aught of the base deserter, Willie

Hastings' father. He did, indeed, take one forward step while his fist

clinched involuntarily, but the next moment fell powerless at his side

as a low wail of pain reached his ear and he turned in time to save his

fainting mother from falling to the floor.

She, too, had seen the ropemaker, glancing at him twice ere sure she saw

aright, and then, as if a corpse buried years ago had arisen to her

view, the blood curdled about her heart which after one mighty throe lay

heavy and still as lead. He was not dead; that paragraph in the paper

telling her so was false; he did not die, such as he could not die; he

was alive--alive--a convict within those prison walls; a living,

breathing man with that same look she remembered so well, shuddering as

she remembered it, 'Lina's father and her own husband!

"It was the heat, or the smell, or the parting with Adah, or something,"

she said, when she came back to consciousness, eagerly scanning Hugh's

face to see if he knew too, and then glancing timidly around as if in

quest of the phantom which had so affected her.